Is it man pitted against machines, or is it man sacrificed to machine? Or is it mankind sacrificed to machines. Sitting in the War Memorial Opera House for Mason Bates’…
King Arthur: Early Opera Company at Temple Church
Gustav Holst condemned the entire genre of semi-opera as ‘almost insuperable’, at once ‘too dramatic for the concert platform’ and ‘too incoherent for the stage’. How, he asked, are these…
Monteverdi’s Poppea: a new production from ETO’s General Director, Robin Norton-Hale
English Touring Opera’s Autumn 2023 season opened at the Hackney Empire on Saturday 30 September 2023. This was the first season under new General Director, Robin Norton-Hale, and the opening…
Voices and Viols: Ensemble Pro Victoria and the Arculo Consort of Viols at Hatfield House
The extravagantly carved Marble Hall at Hatfield House, which is named after its black-and-white chequered floor, remains much as it was when Robert Cecil, the 1st Earl of Salisbury, built…
Ruby Hughes and friends at the Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival
The theme of this year’s Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival is ‘A Family Affair’. As Lord Salisbury and Artistic Director Guy Johnston explain in their introductions in the Festival programme,…
Medtner in England: a marvellous new release from SOMM
Composer-pianist Nikolai Medtner (1880-1951) has sometimes been labelled, like his compatriot and friend Sergei Rachmaninov, as being ‘born too late’. The late-Romantic idiom in which they both wrote, well into…
Glowing Wagner and Mahler’s Fourth from Vladimir Jurowski and the Bayerisches Staatsorchester
I first heard the Bayerisches Staatsorchester in the early 1980s – and one’s earliest memories, of ones first orchestras, often remain long over time. Wolfgang Sawallisch – never a favourite…
The English Tenor: a debut disc from Scott Robert Shaw
The English Tenor might seem a rather odd title for a disc which is sung by a tenor who was born in Australia, trained at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music…
Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore at the Royal Opera House
Now in its fifth revival, the popularity of Laurent Pelly’s L’elisir d’amore remains unchanged, his nicely observed 1950s rural Italy still pulling in the punters. It’s not just the arresting…
The Glass Eye: Hugh Cutting sings a new song cycle by Alex Ho at the Oxford International Song Festival
The theme of this year’s Oxford International Song Festival (previously known as Oxford Lieder) is Art:Song – Images/Words/Music. The performances, exhibitions and events will bring the visual arts, poetry and…